Jeff Sherratt - Detour to Murder

“That would be John Barr, the cowboy star. That’s what he said before.”

“Yes, but then I asked him about the woman in the mini-skirt, Jimmy, just like you wanted me to-”

“Just a minute, dear,” Sol interrupted. “Would you care to have one of these little goodies?” He picked up one of the remaining canapes from the plate and handed it to her.

She took a nibble. “Hey, groovy,” she said. “Condensed mushroom soup and cold lobster. I make it all the time.”

So the recipe is a big secret. That’s a laugh. Sol probably got it off the soup can.

Rita took another bite. “It’s good, but maybe this has too much Tabasco.”

“That’s what I thought,” Sol said.

“Please, can we get back to business?” I said. “I’m dying to hear what Jerome had to say. Sol, we need proof. Maybe Rita found something we can use.”

Rita looked perplexed. “Proof of what?”

“We figure Jerome is the murderer. Or at least he had his henchmen do the dirty work. He probably killed Vera, too.”

“Think so, Jimmy?” Rita said.

“Yeah, it all fits. Now, what did he say?”

“How do you figure?”

“I’ll tell you later, but first I want to hear what Jerome had to say. Might help validate our theory.”

Rita’s voice trailed off when Jeanine appeared with her glass of wine. In the meantime, the cocktail lounge had filled with happy-hour patrons. The piano player, a silver-haired geezer in a threadbare tux, had started to pound out a few old favorites, and I do mean old , pop-chart toppers of the forties. The guy did a copacetic rendition of “The Dipsy Doodle.”

Rita took a sip of her wine and continued, “Jimmy, you wanted me to ask Jerome if he remembered receiving any calls from Vera back in 1945. I thought it would be impossible for anyone to remember something like that after all these years, but I asked him anyway.”

“Did he remember?”

“Oh, he remembered the call, all right. Said he’d never forget it. He said she had made several calls to MGM. The first time the switchboard just hung up on her when she asked to speak with him. But she’d called back, called the security department, and told them that Jerome’s life was in danger. I asked him why she’d called the security department. I thought security handled the gate guards and stuff like that.”

“No, sweetheart,” Sol said. “MGM’s security department protected the studio’s movie stars. The talent was considered property worth millions, and the studio took a dim view of anyone screwing with the reputation or safety of its most valuable assets. Eddie Mannix, head of security, and Howard Strickling, head of publicity, were known as fixers. Their job was to keep the actors in line. When the assets got in trouble, as they often did, the fixers kept their names out of the papers and, if needed, kept them out of jail.”

I thought back to my days on the LAPD. Over drinks at the local hangout, a cop joint on South Central, the old-timers told stories about how Mannix and Stickling were able to cover up misdemeanors and felonies committed by matinee idols of the day. And a few times they even swept blatant murders under the rug. The detectives who were called out on a case involving an MGM movie star were told not to ask questions, just accept what Mannix and Strickling had to say. If they said the death was a suicide or an accident, that’s how it went down.

At first I didn’t completely believe what they told us about the studio fixing murder cases. I figured the old dogs were jiving the young bucks, but then I read that Superman had killed himself and I began to wonder. George Reeves, the actor who played the Man of Steel in the popular 1950s TV series, had been found shot to death in his bedroom, but the gun that killed him was discovered nowhere near the body. It had been rumored that Reeves had been fooling around with Toni Mannix, Eddie’s wife.

“Back in the thirties and forties MGM owned the town. What the studio wanted they got and what they said was law,” I said.

“Yes, that’s exactly how Jerome had put it,” Rita added.

“What did he tell you about Vera’s phone call to the security department?” I asked.

“Mannix took her call and she told him that Al Roberts, a guy who’d already murdered one man, was in town gunning for Jerome. Mannix took the threat seriously, especially since Vera knew the details about Sue Harvey and Roberts and their plans to marry before she took off for Hollywood.”

“Vera had the movie magazine,” I said. “The one with the picture in it of Jerome and Sue together at a nightclub. The caption said they were engaged. And of course Roberts had let Vera know why he’d hitchhiked to Los Angeles. But he probably wasn’t even aware that Sue had hooked up with a big-time movie guy.”

“Not according to Jerome. He said Vera had told Mannix that Roberts was boiling mad about Sue being engaged to the actor and he planned to eliminate his competition.”

“My God, she said that?”

“Yes, again according to Jerome, she did. She said Roberts had a gun and was dead serious. Then she told Mannix that she could take Roberts out of the picture. Mannix pretended to go along with Vera, even encouraged her. She said she wanted five thousand dollars to get rid of him. But first she wanted to speak personally to Jerome. Mannix told her to call back in one hour. He’d have the actor there. She could speak to him then. One hour would give him time to rig up a call-trace so they could have the police pick her up.”

“Did she call back?” I asked.

“The phone records indicate that there were three calls made to the studio from the bungalow,” Sol said.

“That’s right, Sol. Three phone calls. She did call back, right on schedule. Mannix had summoned Jerome to the security department and he got on the line. She repeated her story how Roberts was coming after him, and how she had a plan to get rid of him permanently, provided someone paid her five thousand dollars.”

“What’d Jerome tell her?”

“On orders from Mannix, he told Vera he could get the money, then he told her that they’d have to arrange a meeting to work out the details, but she refused to divulge her location. He tried to keep her on the line so they could finish the trace, but she smelled a rat and hung up. She said she would call back the next day with instructions.”

“Phone calls had to be traced by hand through the old Crossbar switching mechanism back then. Took several minutes,” Sol said.

“Then what happened?” I asked Rita.

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean nothing?”

“She never called back. Mannix finally called the cops.”

“I wonder why she didn’t make the call,” I said, more or less to myself, but Rita answered.

“She didn’t call back because she was dead.”

“It’d be hard to make a phone call if you’re dead,” Sol said, lighting another cigar.

Rita ignored him. “Two days later the police informed Mannix that a woman had been found murdered in a motel. The cops pulled the phone records and saw the calls she’d made to the studio-they saw the same phone numbers you have, Jimmy-and figured she had to be the one who’d offered to bump off Roberts.”

“Was Jerome nervous about Roberts being in town?” I asked.

“He said he wasn’t, said they got calls like that all the time. Mannix figured it could be real, but Jerome thought the whole thing was a hoax all along.”

We didn’t speak for a moment. Sol toked on his cigar, Rita sipped her Chablis, and I sat quietly mulling over what Jerome had told Rita.

Sol rested his cigar on the rim of an ashtray and looked across at me. “Well, there goes your case, Jimmy,” he said.